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August 03, 2006
Individualism Old and New (and even newer?)
Categories: Classes
I've been revisiting Dewey's Indivdiualism Old and New this week as I continue work on the on-line class and some related research projects. This work was an important part of my MA thesis; I'm rereading it in order to further explore Dewey's ideas about community and individuality.
I'm struggling with the piece a bit, honestly. The work is an attempt to describe the present conditions of American society (Dewey wrote IOaN in 1930, as a series of essays for the New Republic), and to argue that a new individuality was needed that could deal with the emerging conditions of industrialization and interrconnectivity such industrial change brought about. This new individualism involves "a type of individual whose pattern of thought and desire is enduringly marked by consensus with others, and in whom sociability is one with cooperation in all regular human associations." (84)
Is Dewey just saying we need to think of the consequences of our actions in the social realm before acting? That we necessarily live with others and cooperation ought to be the norm? This does not seem all that radical to me, unless one takes it to political and economic levels. He offers political and economic suggestions that sound socialist, though he explicity denies he is advocating a standard socialist position. When he talks of cooperative ownership and decries the fact that those who engage in the work of production have little say in the direction of their activities, he sounds like Marx. he is clearly worried that the "Old-school" indivdiualism of the frontier is being maintained by those in power in order to keep everyone's energy focused on production and consumption for profit, instead of figuring out ways for different sorts of people to live together and still pursue their own projects as individuals.
But maybe that's the real question Dewey is wrestling with -- how can the liberal goal of multiple versions and pursuits of the good life withstand the corporate America he sees emerging. He asks this question almost directly at the beginning of chapter seven: "Can a material, industrial civilization be converted into a distinctive agency for liberating the mind and refining the emotions of all who take part in it?" (100) Clearly, a material industrialization is a good way to make certain people wealthy. Those people have a vested interest in keeping the conversations of the good life on a strictly monetary level; as long as everyone is producing and consuming, they make out okay. But Dewey is interested in individuality as possibility, possibility that can only be explored and achieved in cooporation with others (since that is what our society has become). Dewey, as always, is interested in individual growth. Now, however, such growth always takes place within and because of a social world. Socialism cannot guarantee that: "It is impossible to develop integrated (1) individuality by any all embracing system or program." (121). Integrated individuality can only emerge as we choose and deal with situations according to our ideals, ends, and anticipated outcomes thus related. This is an indivdiual task carried out in the natural world, which for us human beings is a social world.
Dewey thus becomes a existential naturalist. We are integrated into a world not, as other existentialists would argue intrinsically hostile or compeltely devoid of value (we are not born into a world alone, we are born into a social world). Yet the world is in flux and we must make meaning forourselves and the world with our choices. We need a social system that recognizes and promotes this ability.
Dewey ends with two marvelous quotes:
"We who are also parst of the moving present, create ourselves as we create an unknown future." (123)
"To gain an integrated individuality, each of us needs to cultivate his own garden. But there is no fence about this garden: it is no sharply marked off enclosure. Our garden is the world." (122-123)
Wow. So in the voicing of my difficulties with the piece, I kinda figured it out. Unless, well, I didn't. In which case I hope someone calls me on it. Now I just need to figure out how it relates to on-line education and I'll be set!
Dewey, John. (1984). Individualism old and new. In John Dewey: The Later Works, Volume 5: 1929-1930, edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. 41-123.
Posted by Nakia at August 3, 2006 12:09 PM